My Inspiration

 There is perhaps no more level playing field in business than the Internet. It is this fact that has created millionaires from paupers. The amount of money that can be made depends of course on your industry and your products and/or services but to be sure, if it can be sold at all, it can be sold online. While there are many methods out there for building a profitable website, from banner ads to email campaigns, by far the most cost effective over time has proven repeatedly to be search engine positioning. That major advantage search engine positioning has over other methods of producing revenue online is that once high rankings are attained and provided that the tactics used were ethical and that continued efforts are made to keep them, they can essentially hold and provide targeted traffic indefinitely. Your site will rise and your site may sometimes fall in the rankings but a solid and complete optimization of your site will insure that through algorithm changes you may fluctu...

 This article might be a bit different than you've come to expect from a webmaster-related article. The reason is that, in my opinion, it is a facet of the internet many people don't really think about. And that is communication. But, by communication I mean more than just talking or writing. Read on... What is Communication? Communication is defined simply as the transferring of an idea or concept from one point to another with full duplication on the receiving side. This last component is one often forgotten. So, a full one-way communication would be Fred has an idea about a widget. He propels that idea across space to Ted. Ted receives the communication, understands it, and has full duplication on his end of the exact concept Fred was thinking about that widget. Now, a full two-way communication would be the above process, but with the addendum that Ted thereby acknowledge Fred for his communication, sending the acknowledgement across space to Fred, at which point Fred recei...

 Unless you've been under a rock for the last year, you've heard the term "blog" once or twice.   To most people, a "blog" simply represents a glorified online "diary" where geeks, computer nerds, and lonely teenagers record their thoughts in cyber-space.   However, many people don't realize that "blogs" are quietly revolutionizing the way companies and customers interact about everything from existing products to new ideas and improvements in customer service.  In short, "blog" style communication has come of age and anyone with an online business better sit up and take notice fast!  In the beginning, "blogs" were basically an online diary to record your thoughts; but "blogs" have now evolved into dynamic websites that non-technical people can update immediately without html editors or ftp programs.   Blogs allow their authors to make instant website updates through a computer anywhere in the world with ...

Everything changes when you trade in your desktop for a laptop and your office for a hotel room. Sometimes this is for the better: You're liberated from your cubicle and free to go where your work takes you. But sometimes things change for the worse. Productivity suffers when you're in an unfamiliar place. The way a laptop keyboard cramps your hands is sometimes enough to keep you from getting the job done right. Here are four technology "must-haves" for the mobile office, plus some tools that can boost your productivity while you're away. • The Right Software It isn't just downloading the necessary applications onto your laptop or PDA, it's also knowing whether the programs are suited to a mobile office. Is your email program built for the road or adapted from a bigger application meant for a corporate network? Do the programs work together on your laptop or do they freeze when your processor gets busy? These considerations can become big issues wh...

 Last month, my featured article was about creating a “Stop Doing” list. Hopefully, if you followed my suggestion, you now have a list of tasks that you are looking to delegate away. It seems a natural progression that I now disclose a few simple steps that will ensure your foray into delegation is a success.  1. Choose the right “delegatee”  Review the task and determine what skills are required. Delegation goes much more smoothly if you match the person with the appropriate skill set to the task you have to assign. Now if you don’t have a candidate that has all the skills you are looking for, decide which is the most critical one (analytical ability, attention to detail, communications skills) and make that match.  One of the rewards of delegation is the opportunity to help someone develop and grow. It is unlikely that you will always have a candidate that you can hand off something to and not have to provide some training or coaching. But learning to empower your ...

A lot of people do not realize that entrepreneurs play a big role in our society.   When you put the total number of entrepreneurs together, they count as the biggest financial contributors to our nation’s wealth.  If only politicians would give grants to finance small business start-ups, the economy’s growth could be hastened.   Knowing the obvious financial rewards and the important role to society of business owners, many individuals aspire to be entrepreneurs.  The fact remains, however, that several business start-ups fail and never take-off  from the ground because of one thing : the lack of adequate and sufficient knowledge on how to start a profitable business.  In this article, I will attempt to give practical strategies on how to run a successful business start-up. First: find opportunities in your own backyard. Look at the demand side by observing your neighborhood.  It is good to assess the close-to-home demand...

 Question:  What’s the easiest, cheapest and quickest way to have profitable, productive, and honest employees? Answer:  Hire profitable, productive, honest people! Unfortunately, managers often hire underachievers or losers.  Fortunately, pre-employment tests give managers a simple-to-use, quick, customizable way to hire the best. Only 1 Reason to Screen Applicants The sole reason to assess applicants is to predict – or forecast – how an applicant will behave on-the-job BEFORE you hire the person.  It proves crucial to prediction this before hiring an applicant, rather than finding out the expensive way after you put the person on your payroll. The main methods used to predict if an applicant will succeed on-the-job are Interviews Reference Checks Pre-employment Tests Alarming Research Large-scale research discovered most interviewers and reference checks make lousy predictions of actual on-the-job performance.  Interviews and reference checks often ...